Management Team

Vijay K. Thadani

Vice Chairman & Managing Director, NIIT Limited,

Co-Founder, NIIT University

Vijay K. Thadani is the Vice Chairman & Managing Director of NIIT Ltd, a leading Global Skills and Talent Development Corporation. As the co-founder of NIIT Group, he has built an organization that is recognized for its visionary role in bringing the benefits of Information Technology, both as a professional skill and as a learning tool, to the masses.

Vijay has led the Group's globalization efforts since 1991, taking the NIIT flag to over 40 countries and has been actively engaged with many Industry Associations. He served as President of the Indian IT industry association, MAIT and as the Chairman of CII Northern Region for 2011- 2012. He also served as the Chairman of the National Accreditation Board for Education and Training (NABET), under the aegis of the Quality Council of India and as the Chairman of Board of Governors of Indian Institute of Information Technology (IIIT), Allahabad.

Vijay is the co-founder of the not-for-profit, NIIT University established in 2009 with a vision of being the role model of learning, research, innovation and sustainability for the Knowledge Society. He is a Founder Director on the Board of NIIT Technologies Limited, a leading SEI-CMMi Level 5 assessed IT Solutions organization, servicing customers in the USA, Europe, Japan, Asia Pacific and India. He serves on the Board of Governors of Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Delhi. He also chairs CII's National Committee on Higher Education and serves on the Governing Council of All India Management Association (AIMA). Additionally, he has served as the chairperson for Board of Governors of MN National Institute of Technology, Allahabad.

A 'Distinguished Alumnus' of the premier Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, Vijay was honored with the position of 'Economic Consultant' to Chongqing, world's largest city in the People's Republic of China.

P. Rajendran

Joint Managing Director & Co-Founder,

NIIT Ltd

Parappil Rajendran, Joint Managing Director of NIIT Ltd., is a member of the core team that developed and brought the organization to its present position of global standing, since its inception in 1981.

He received his degree in Electrical Engineering at Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, India in 1974 and joined KELTRON, a nascent electronic products company set up by Govt. of Kerala, where he worked for eight years. During this period he was involved in marketing, product management and sales of electronic industrial products. Later he moved into the domain of electronic automation and control of power stations.

Rajendran also serves on the Board of Management of the not-for-profit NIIT University set up in Neemrana, Rajasthan with the vision of creating the University of the Future built on the foundation of Industry-linked, Technology-based, Research-driven and Seamless learning.

He is also actively engaged with NIIT Foundation, which addresses the skilling and employability needs of youth from the underprivileged segments of the society.

Rajendran has been associated with the apex industry association, Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) for over a decade.

Sapnesh Lalla

Chief Executive Officer,

NIIT Ltd

Sapnesh Lalla is the CEO of NIIT Ltd, a global leader in skills and talent development, offering broad-based education and training solutions to corporations, institutions, and individuals in over 40 countries.

Prior to his appointment as the CEO, Sapnesh served as the President of NIIT’s Global Corporate Business, which constitutes nearly seventy percent of NIIT’s total business. He led critical initiatives for the expansion of the company in North America and Europe including significant acquisitions like Cognitive Arts and Element K. Under his leadership, NIIT has grown to become a leading global learning outsourcing solutions provider with its Managed Training Services offering.

Sapnesh is now in his 25th year at NIIT and has served in India and USA. He started his career as a Project Lead in the Learning Content Development team in 1992. Over time, he has held various management and leadership roles in product management, customer support, channel development, sales, and support functions. In 2006, Sapnesh was appointed the President of NIIT (USA), Inc. and has since been an integral part of the CEO's leadership team.

Sapnesh is an Electronics and Communications Engineer from Bangalore University and received his Executive Education at the Ross School of Business, University of Michigan. He was selected into the prestigious Managing Director’s Quality Club and has the distinction of receiving the coveted Global Leadership Award twice in 2001 and 2010.

Amit Roy

Chief Financial Officer,

NIIT Ltd.

Amit Roy is the CFO of NIIT Ltd, a leading Global Skills and Talent Development Corporation. He has a long and varied Industry experience of over 37 years with some of the leading corporate houses.

Amit’s expertise lies in various fields of Corporate Finance, Accounts, Audit & Assurance, Corporate Governance, Corporate Affairs and Enterprise Risks management with specialization in Corporate Finance, Audit, Processes and Risks Management to name a few. He is a Fellow Member of The Institute of Chartered Accountants of India and a Science Graduate.

Prior to joining NIIT in 2004, Amit has worked in senior positions with Titagarh Industries Limited, JCT Fibers & JCT Electronics Limited (Thapar Group) and Escorts Tractors Ltd. During his current tenure with NIIT, Amit has also held the key portfolio of CFO for NIIT Technologies Ltd. in the year 2010 and 2015. In his long tenure in the industry, he has handled critical functions like merger, demerger, acquisition, amalgamation, fund raising activities for expansion, project finance (new project and enhanced Capacity), working capital management arrangement, raising fund through equity, preference issues from public &private placement including GDR/ADR/ECB/FCCB and more.

Amit has also held offices in industry bodies, chambers and Regulatory bodies like Audit and Assurance Standard Board of The Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI). He was a nominee of CII. At present, he is a member of National Committee of “Accounting Standard & Company Law” in CII.

Prakash Menon

President, Global Retail Business,

NIIT Ltd.

Prakash Menon is the President of Global Retail Business, NIIT Ltd. He is responsible for NIIT’s Retail business globally, which includes India B2C Business, Emerging Markets and China and the Online Retail Business (under Training.com).

Prakash began his career with NIIT in Chennai in 1985, and played many roles including being the head of Bangalore region and head of marketing and sales in India for the education business. Later he moved to China in 1997 to establish NIIT's operations in the country. In fact, NIIT was the first Indian IT company to do so.

Prakash brings with him, a rich international experience and is responsible for digitally transforming NIIT's Retail business in the country. He spearheads NIIT’s latest offering in the digital space which include Training.com and NIIT.tv. His charter also involves revamping NIIT's curriculum offerings in India to serve the urgent skilling needs for a Digital Workforce.

In his last role before taking on the current assignment, Prakash was responsible for NIIT's retail Skills & Career business outside India, which included China, Africa and South East Asia. He drove it to become the fastest growing and most profitable business unit of NIIT.

Having seen various facets of the organization as a veteran NIITian, and with a global experience in the fast moving Chinese market, Prakash has been instrumental in driving new models of Educational Technology to enable successful digital transformation of the China business.

Under Prakash's leadership, NIIT has been acknowledged by the Chinese government as the 'Most influential IT Training Brand' in China and has also been awarded as the 'Best Innovation Brand' in the Education sector in India by the ASSOCHAM National Brand Summit & Excellence Awards 2016. Further, he has been personally felicitated by the Chinese government, for influencing the development of the Training industry in China.

Gavin Dabreo

CEO, MindChampion Learning Systems Limited (MLSL)

NIIT Limited

Gavin Dabreo is the Chief Executive Officer of MindChampion Learning Systems Limited
(MLSL)- NIIT's K-12 school learning subsidiary. An MBA from the Manchester Business
School, UK, Gavin has extensive work experience of 25 years across - education,
transportation, telecom and consumer product industries. He began his career in
1991, in advertising with FCB Ulka in Mumbai. He moved out of advertising by joining
a pioneering venture called Sterling Resorts in the mid 90s. Subsequently in 1998,
Gavin was part of the original team that launched Tata's telecom venture, Tata Teleservices.
In 2008 he joined Meru Cabs, as one of the founding members of the management committee,
helping the team build Meru Cabs into India's largest and favourite taxi company.
He then had an entrepreneurial stint in the education K12 space, which he subsequently
sold. In 2014 as CEO at Varsity Education Management, he executed one of India's
largest digital education program in Sri Chaitanya Schools and established India's
first edu-cloud network in partnership with Microsoft Corporation.

Rajan Venkataraman

Chief Digital Officer,

NIIT Limited

Rajan Venkataraman, Chief Digital Officer, NIIT Ltd., is responsible for the digital strategy and transformation of NIIT. He works closely with the CEO and Business leaders, to shape the digital transformation journey of NIIT.

As the Chief Digital Officer, Rajan also heads Learning Science & Technology (LST) – a central division that has been formed with a clear charter to work on Digital Transformation for the entire organization. Rajan is responsible for integrating Learning Sciences and Data Sciences into a platform to deliver the desired future digital business model and superior digital customer experiences.

Rajan started his journey as a Post-Graduate student from NIIT Chennai in 1988 and moved to USA to establish the NIIT Global Technology Arm in 1996. He then went on to become the Chief Technology Officer of NIIT, and drove the design and implementation of NIIT’s innovative Computerdrome facility that provided 24x7 computer labs at major cities in India.

He has worked towards initiating technology transformation at NIIT powered by a strong EduTech team. Under his leadership continuous technical experiments and innovations are undertaken to arrive at new and unique solutions for customers.

He has spearheaded, multiple technology driven business products and solutions, with NIIT.tv and training.com being the latest additions, his other initiatives include - multi-lingual Learning Management System and Cloud Campus.

Rajan’s passion for Data Communications and Networks led him to implement NIIT’s intranet and extranet. Rajan has been recognized with multiple awards for his significant contributions globally.

Arjun Shankar

Chief Corporate Management Services Officer,

NIIT Limited

Arjun Shankar, Chief - Corporate Management Services NIIT Ltd.,
looks after the Human Resources function, Commercial Services portfolio
and also oversees the Skills Training business of NIIT Ltd. He has
been with the NIIT group for over 25 years, having worked in different roles
and business verticals like BFSI Education and Training, IT Education and Training,
Knowledge Process Outsourcing (KPO) business and the Knowledge Solutions Business (KSB).

Arjun has been responsible for implementation of network based education
administration systems and has also worked towards achieving the first ISO
certification for the Education Business. He has been a part of the team that
won the Smart Schools project of the Malaysian Multimedia Super-Corridor Initiative.
As a core member of IFBI (Institute of Finance, Banking and Insurance) he played a
key role in training and placing over 35,000 students in the Banking sector in India.

A Management post graduate from BITS Pilani, Arjun is passionate about people, teaching-learning
and process management and leads key capability building initiatives at NIIT.

Udai Singh

Chief Strategy Officer & President B2B India,

NIIT Ltd.

Udai is currently Chief Strategy Officer & President B2B India, NIIT Limited. He is responsible for NIIT’s Corporate Learning Business in India and additionally drives strategic change initiatives for the organization. Over the past 18 months his focus has been on conceptualizing and executing NIIT’s strategy to create a multi-modal learning delivery capability through innovations such as StackRoute, an Immersive Learning initiative to create the world’s best Full Stack programmers, NIIT.tv an internet learning portal that brings NIIT’s learning offerings including live programs free to learners in India and Emerging markets, and Training.com an online learning destination for working professionals.

Udai has been involved in the design & implementation of numerous technology enabled learning innovations at NIIT over the years. He helped setup NetVarsity.com one of the world’s earliest online learning portals in 1996, and subsequently evolved this into a Brick-and-Portal model of Blended Education delivery at NIIT in 2002. In 2006, he helped setup NIIT Imperia and brought Executive Management Education from Premier institutes such as IIM Ahmedabad and IIM Calcutta to working professionals across India through a unique Synchronous Learning Technology platform. Most recently he conceptualized & deployed India’s first Cloud CampusTM featuring NIIT’s unique Cloud & Collaborative Learning Model.

During the period 2003-06, he was the Head of Global Design, Delivery, and Information Systems (GDD) at NIIT. He was responsible for the design and development of all NIIT Education products and setting the standards for Education Delivery on a global basis. Additionally, he was responsible for all the Systems Integration and Software Applications Development for NIIT’s Education businesses. This involved the development and deployment of mission critical applications across over 700 NIIT centres globally, in addition to the centralized applications deployed at 2 data centres.

Udai did his B.E. in Electrical & Electronics Engineering and M.E. in Electronics & Control from BITS, Pilani. Became the youngest Lecturer at the age of 21 and taught Computer Science courses for a year before joining NIIT in 1990.

DJ Chadha

Executive Vice President & Global Head,

LDO & Content Design & Development, NIIT Ltd.

DJ Chadha is the EVP Global Delivery at NIIT’s Corporate Learning Group and heads Learning Delivery Operations and Learning content practice. He is responsible for P&L and execution of all learning outsourcing contracts globally. His key responsibilities include zero defect delivery of all customer commitments profitably, support sales in customer acquisition and employee retention.

DJ joined NIIT in 1992 and has significantly contributed to the growth of the organization in a variety of roles, including Regional Technology Head, Director of Training and Head of Corporate Training. In his role as Regional Technology Head, DJ was responsible for the management of 45 training centers which included the rollout of new curriculum, recruitment, trainer ramp up, and budgets for the entire region. As Director of Training, DJ built NIIT's corporate training business worldwide by orchestrating and managing training delivery for large-scale Managed Training Service partnerships.

Sailesh Lalla

Executive Vice President,

Business Development, NIIT Ltd.

Sailesh Lalla is the Senior Vice President of Business Development at NIIT's Corporate Learning Group and leads the company's learning outsourcing initiatives across corporate markets in North America and Europe. Sailesh has been a part of NIIT for 23 years, and has rich experience of forging and managing the governance of large scale outsourcing relationships. He has spearheaded NIIT's Managed Training Services offering and has been instrumental in the company’s growth as a market leader in learning outsourcing. He brings rich international expertise, having lived and worked on major training outsourcing relationships in Singapore, Australia and India.

About NIIT

NIIT is a leading Global Talent Development Corporation, building skilled manpower pool for global industry requirements. The company which was set up in 1981, to help the nascent IT industry overcome its human resource challenges, has today grown to be amongst world's leading talent development companies offering
learning solutions to Individuals, Enterprises and Institutions across 40 countries.